The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 eBook

emerged the Austro-Italian policy of an independent
Albania. But natural and essential as this policy
was for Italy and Austria-Hungary, it was fatal to
Servia’s dream of expansion to the Adriatic;
it set narrow limits to the northward extension of
Greece into Epirus, and the southward extension of
Montenegro below Scutari; it impelled these Allies
to seek compensation in territory that Bulgaria had
regarded as her peculiar preserve; and as a consequence
it seriously menaced the existence of the Balkan Alliance
torn as it already was by mutual jealousies, enmities,
aggressions, and recriminations.

RECOIL OF SERVIA TOWARD THE AEGEAN

The first effect of the European fiat regarding an
independent Albania was the recoil of Servia against
Bulgaria. Confronted by the force majeure of
the Great Powers which estopped her advance to the
Adriatic, Servia turned her anxious regard toward the
Gulf of Saloniki and the Aegean Sea. Already
her victorious armies had occupied Macedonia from
the Albanian frontier eastward beyond the Vardar River
to Strumnitza, Istib, and Kochana, and southward below
Monastir and Ghevgheli, where they touched the boundary
of the Greek occupation of Southern Macedonia.
An agreement with the Greeks, who held the city of
Saloniki and its hinterland as well as the whole Chalcidician
Peninsula, would ensure Servia an outlet to the sea.
And the merchants of Saloniki—­mostly the
descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in the fifteenth
century—­were shrewd enough to recognize
the advantage to their city of securing the commerce
of Servia, especially as they were destined to lose,
in consequence of hostile tariffs certain to be established
by the conquerors, a considerable portion of the trade
which had formerly flowed to them without let or hindrance
from a large section of European Turkey. The
government of Greece was equally favorably disposed
to this programme; for, in the first place, it was
to its interest to cultivate friendly relations with
Servia, in view of possible embroilments with Bulgaria;
and, in the second place, it had to countercheck the
game of those who wanted either to make Saloniki a
free city or to incorporate it in a Big Bulgaria, and
who were using with some effect the argument that
the annexation of the city to Greece meant the throttling
of its trade and the annihilation of its prosperity.
The interests of the city of Saloniki, the interests
of Greece, and the interests of Servia all combined
to demand the free flow of Servian trade by way of
Saloniki. And if no other power obtained jurisdiction
over any Macedonian territory through which that trade
passed, it would be easy for the Greek and Servian
governments to come to an understanding.